Close your eyes and repeat: The PS of Finland isn’t a neo-Nazi and fascist party…

We’ve seen this before, haven’t we? Members of Finland’s third-largest party in parliament, the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, flirting with a neo-Nazi group like the Kansallinen Vastarinta (SVL). Teemu Lahtinen is a PS councilman of the city of Espoo who allegedly “liked” the neo-Nazi group’s Facebook page, according to Paljastettuand other sources.

After this was uncovered, Lahtinen allegedly vanished from the page by “unliking” it.

Espoo, located next door to Helsinki, is Finland’s second-biggest city.

The PS councilman, whose far-right sympathies are well-known, was president of Suomen Sisu in 1998-2002 and 2005-2007 and involved in IKL, a far-right association that had close ties with the National Front of France in the 1990s.

The Espoo councilman has been toying with the idea of founding the White Guards, a local militia that was dissolved after Finland signed an armistice with the former Soviet Union in 1944.

If the PS aim to be a credible party, why do some of their members seek membership or like neo-Nazi groups like the SV that aim to convert Finland into a one-party state? There are two reasons:

The PS doesn’t care;

It’s July, most of Finland is on holiday and nobody reads the papers anyway.

One PS MP, Juho Eerola, who is third vice-president of the party, admitted being “attracted” to Benito Mussolini’s fascism.

If the Lahtinen story is true, the Espoo councilman has a lot of explaining to do. “Liking” a neo-Nazi group is no light matter. The first ones to take action should be the PS. I wouldn’t, however, hold my breath.

If the PS decides to let Lahtinen slide, it reinforces once again what we’ve known all along about the party that has based its support on anti-EU, anti-immigration, homophobic and especially anti-Islam sentiment and is a menace to this country.

* The Finnish name for the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The names adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We therefore prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings.